Afghanistan is more than the 'graveyard of empires.' It's the mother of vicious circles.

Zingers should glow with intelligence as well as drip with contempt.

The sounds of silence are a dim recollection now, like mystery, privacy and paying attention to one thing — or one person — at a time.

Good and evil are not like the Redskins and the Cowboys.

If you're famous enough, the rules don't apply.

The Mayans were right, as it turns out, when they predicted the world would end in 2012. It was just a select world: the G.O.P. universe of arrogant, uptight, entitled, bossy, retrogressive white guys. [...] Instead of smallpox, plagues, drought and Conquistadors, the Republican decline will be traced to a stubborn refusal to adapt to a world where poor people and sick people and black people and brown people and female people and gay people count.

Military guys are rarely as smart as they think they are, and they've never gotten over the fact that civilians run the military.